MySpace Announces New Privacy Controls, Gives Way to ‘Bright Flight’

By Allison Bland

On May 31st, the first large-scale, volunteer-coordinated deactivation of Facebook accounts is set to occur. Privacy concerns have been escalating on Facebook for some time and a critical mass is now committed to logging-out in favor of more trusted pastures. Luckily, MySpace will be there to usher in these disillusioned users. Sound familiar?

To make the case for this reversal, look no further than the analysis released by the Brookings Institute last week. The findings, which interrogate 2000-2008 census data, show that more younger, educated whites are choosing to move to cities like Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Raleigh and New York, while substantial shares of minorities are being necessitated to leave these same cities. For the first time, America’s suburbs are most likely to be populated by people of color, the poor, and older populations. Just don’t call it “white flight.”

Social life on the internet might be imitating this same trend. Alan Berube, research director at the Metropolitan Policy Program, says, “The old concepts of suburbia, Sun Belt and Rust Belt are outdated and at odds with effective governance.” Similarly, these members representing the “cultural generation gap” who are moving to cities for knowledge-based jobs, aren’t buying the disorganized run-around Facebook is giving their inquiries about lack of privacy. They demand cooperative and transparent authority.

So who other than these bright individuals, capable of composing, “a new image of urban America,” according to William H. Frey, co-author of the report, to be among the first to direct a new image of the future of the web? It is clearly this demographic who are trading facts and figures, giving presentations, and otherwise imploring each other to wake up to the reality of Facebook’s commandeering of their personal information.

The folks behind QuitFacebookDay.com write, “The cumulative effects of what Facebook does now will not play out well in the future, and we care deeply about the future of the web as an open, safe and human place. We just can’t see Facebook’s current direction being aligned with any positive future for the web, so we’re leaving.” In other words: “THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED.”

Those who signed sub-prime mortgages got suckered and lost their homes. The ugly debacle played out across well-worn creases of class and race. The “bright” (and mostly white) though, knew how to safe-guard against such travesties, navigating through trusted banks and lenders, free of redlining, and in the comfort of neighbors who shared those experiences. I’m inclined to believe these two disparate outcomes had more to do with social place rather than intelligence.

In a much more transparent way, an effort like QuitFacebookDay.com targets the “average” user to appeal to us all the dangers of being wholly accessible on Facebook. Again, I don’t buy the intelligence argument, but the sentiment is a good one. All users of social networking sites should be tuned in and proactive about their privacy settings. And it would be a great thing if we all did this in the same online space.

Danah Boyd, social media researcher at Microsoft, has found that sites like Facebook and MySpace mirror our social, political, and class divides. In a 2008 dissertation, she found that Facebook users who canceled or abandoned their MySpace accounts are more likely to be white, educated, and privileged. While MySpace was thought to be the “dangerous underbelly of the Internet,” Facebook was the “utopian savior.”

“The fact that digital migration is revealing the same social patterns as urban white flight should send warning signals to all of us,” she said. “It should scare the hell out of us.”

Alarmingly, Michael Wolff told BusinessWeek the same year, “If you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin,” he said. “And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor. Nobody who has beyond an 8th grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people.”

So what happens now that the time seems ripe for a reversal? The brightest aren’t happy on Facebook anymore, and MySpace has made significant improvements. It seems at this moment the dichotomous relationship Boyd found between Facebook and MySpace could turn out to be an epic win for MySpace.

If you look to history, you see that when one got tired of the city (MySpace) they went to the suburbs (Facebook.) So when they grow tired of suburban life, what they long for is to return to the city. There is no evidence that an entirely new domestic structure or social space is what is desired. So it is hard to see a totally new social start-up gaining traction and capturing the demographics already linked into and familiar with Facebook and MySpace.

MySpace announced their brand new public commitment to privacy on Monday. The goal is to simplify settings – users can post updates publicly, to friends only, or publicly to anyone 18 and older. MySpace co-President, Mike Jones says, “We respect our users’ desires to balance sharing and privacy, and never push our users to an uncomfortable privacy position.” Call it harnessing a love for nostalgia, or an old fashion coming back into style, but MySpace’s well-timed announcement might open the floodgates once again for this semi-abandoned “place for friends.”

Whether or not MySpace will again enjoy the dominant position in social networking, and Facebook becomes the “ghetto of the digital landscape,” is to be determined in the coming months. Perhaps Facebook will act on user concerns and re-establish the trust it has lost. But I am trying to remember the password for my MySpace account so I am ready either way.

Category: Social Networking | Tags: Alan Berude, Bright Flight, Brookings Institute, Danah Boyd, facebook, Metropolitan Policy Program, Michael Wolff, Microsoft, myspace, Privacy, QuitFacebookDay.com, white flight, William H. Frey